How to Bring Out the Best in Your People and Company

Connecting with others and belonging are basic human needs that are essential to being our best selves.

When we leave an experience where we presented our imperfect selves yet felt belonging, we feel energized and at our best. When we leave an experience where we presented our imperfect selves and were ignored or ridiculed, we feel deeply disconnected and disengaged.

This is as true at work as … [ Read more ]

Randall J. Beck, Jim Harter

Companies miss the mark on high managerial talent in 82% of their hiring decisions, which is an alarming problem for employee engagement and the development of high-performing cultures…

Conventional selection processes are a big contributor to inefficiency in management practices; they apply little science or research to find the right person for the managerial role. When Gallup asked U.S. managers why they believed they were hired … [ Read more ]

4 Listening Skills Leaders Need to Master

Leaders who listen well create company cultures where people feel heard, valued, and engaged. In addition, employees who experience high-quality listening report greater levels of job satisfaction and psychological safety. If you’re interested in sharpening your listening skills, try using these four techniques: (1) Listen until the end — don’t jump in or interrupt the speaker; (2) Listen to summarize the problem, not to solve … [ Read more ]

Emily Field, Bryan Hancock, Marino Mugayar-Baldocchi, Bill Schaninger

McKinsey research found that workplace relationships account for 39 percent of employees’ job satisfaction. Moreover, relationships with management, in particular, account for 86 percent of workers’ satisfaction with their interpersonal ties at work. Yet, despite the importance of these manager–employee relationships, surveyed managers report spending almost three-quarters of their time on tasks not directly related to talent management.

Why Workers Should Evaluate Their Managers

Implementing bottom-up feedback can improve management and productivity, according to research by Wharton’s Shing-Yi Wang.

Exceptional Performance: A Nonrenewable Resource

What happens when a company achieves the summit? Is there nowhere to go but down? Superior performance, research shows, is neither quite as fragile nor robust as many believe—rather, it’s an attainable albeit slippery plateau. The key is to focus on profitability rather than revenue growth or value creation.

Editor’s Note: This is already a bit of an old article (early 2016) but the concept and … [ Read more ]

Ginni Rometty

Whenever you position something so that there’s going to be a winner and a loser, very rarely have I seen that be to anybody’s benefit.

Well-Being Enhances Benefits of Employee Engagement

Two major factors influence employee performance, Gallup has found: engagement and well-being. Gallup measures engagement for employees through the Q12 survey, which consists of 12 actionable items with proven links to performance outcomes. And with Healthways, we measure well-being through five elements that are crucial to a life well-lived.

Now, many organizations measure and evaluate their employees’ engagement, while others focus on improving their workers’ well-being. … [ Read more ]

Your Growth Strategy Depends on Your Starting Point

There are three truths about revenue growth. It’s imperative. It’s perilous. And it’s possible regardless of your industry or starting point. Our latest research on growth confirms these truths. Ultimately, getting growth right entails making smart choices and investing time and money in them. We unearthed insights from successful growers that can help others choose their optimal growth path. Crucially, our analysis revealed that the … [ Read more ]

Research: When Bonuses Backfire

Why do bonuses sometimes backfire? It’s because each incentive design choice both signals information about your own beliefs and intentions as an employer and shapes the signaling value of employee behavior within the organization. If you don’t think through these signals carefully, you may end up approving a bonus scheme with results that are the opposite of what you intend. This article offers a way … [ Read more ]

Charles Gildehaus, David Allred, Allison Bailey, Amanda Luther, Sesh Iyer

Agile initiatives have proven highly effective in teaching teams how to build but not nearly as effective in teaching teams what to build.

Strengths-Based Employee Development: The Business Results

Key findings from Gallup’s major study of companies that have implemented strengths-based management practices.

A Growth Strategy that Creates and Protects Value

For organizations to truly innovate and grow, leaders in every role and at every organizational level must be attuned to how they are creating new value while simultaneously protecting existing value. Just as a soccer coach must simultaneously pursue both scoring and defending, leaders must constantly focus their attention on opportunities to create value — through innovation, risk-taking, and experimentation — and to protect value … [ Read more ]

Are middle managers in or out?

IESE Profs. Anneloes Raes and Mireia Las Heras consider the pros and cons of non-hierarchical companies.

Why Great Managers Are So Rare

Companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time, Gallup finds.

How to Think Clearly in Turbulent Times: Lessons from Charlie Munger

Munger’s success was built on a system for decision-making—not a classical investment philosophy, but rather a mental discipline underpinning one. We outline four ideas strategists can learn from Munger to think more clearly in turbulent times.

Graham Kenny

The primary focus of a strategic plan is competitiveness. It is designed to respond to change and future opportunities in a way to find advantage. The primary focus of an operational plan is efficiency. Operational plans are designed to roll out strategy via internal department programs developed by, for instance, HR, IT, marketing, and manufacturing.

Graham Kenny

All organizations have competitors — for customers, for staff, for funds, for resources.

Author Talks: Andrew McAfee on how a ‘geek’ mindset can transform your business

Too often, business initiatives get mired in bureaucracy, overconfidence, and lack of ownership. Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Andrew McAfee explores reasons for the dysfunction—and how to fix it.

Annual Planning Sucks — A CPO, CRO, CFO, and COO Share Advice on How to Make it Better

Four top execs reveal their annual planning secrets from Notion, Stripe, Vanta, Linear, Linktree and more. From addressing AI to adjusting org charts, this COO, CFO, CPO & CRO share insights so startups at any stage can build effective, realistic plans.